FIRST MOVEMENT
Thin-voiced, nasal pipes
Drawing sound out and out
Until it is a screeching thread,
Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting,
It hurts.
Whee-e-e!
Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump!
There are drums here,
Banging,
And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones
Of the market-place.
Whee-e-e!
Sabots slapping the worn, old stones,
And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones,
Clumsy and hard they are,
And uneven,
Losing half a beat
Because the stones are slippery.
Bump-e-ty-tong! Whee-e-e! Tong!
The thin Spring leaves
Shake to the banging of shoes.
Shoes beat, slap,
Shuffle, rap,
And the nasal pipes squeal with their pigs' voices,
Little pigs' voices
Weaving among the dancers,
A fine, white thread
Linking up the dancers.
Bang! Bump! Tong!
Petticoats,
Stockings,
Sabots,
Delirium flapping its thigh-bones;
Red, blue, yellow,
Drunkenness steaming in colours;
Red, yellow, blue,
Colours and flesh weaving together,
In and out, with the dance,
Coarse stuffs and hot flesh weaving together.
Pigs' cries white and tenuous,
White and painful,
White and—
Bump!
Tong!
SECOND MOVEMENT
Pale violin music whiffs across the moon,
A pale smoke of violin music blows over the moon,
Cherry petals fall and flutter,
And the white Pierrot,
Wreathed in the smoke of the violins,
Splashed with cherry petals falling, falling,
Claws a grave for himself in the fresh earth
With his finger-nails.
THIRD MOVEMENT
An organ growls in the heavy roof-groins of a church,
It wheezes and coughs.
The nave is blue with incense,
Writhing, twisting,
Snaking over the heads of the chanting priests.
Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine;
The priests whine their bastard Latin
And the censers swing and click.
The priests walk endlessly
Round and round,
Droning their Latin
Off the key.
The organ crashes out in a flaring chord
And the priests hitch their chant up half a tone.
Dies illa, dies iræ,
Calamitatis et miseriæ,
Dies magna et amara valde.
A wind rattles the leaded windows.
The little pear-shaped candle-flames leap and flutter.
Dies illa, dies iræ,
The swaying smoke drifts over the altar.
Calamitatis et miseriæ,
The shuffling priests sprinkle holy water.
Dies magna et amara valde.
And there is a stark stillness in the midst of them,
Stretched upon a bier.
His ears are stone to the organ,
His eyes are flint to the candles,
His body is ice to the water.
Chant, priests,
Whine, shuffle, genuflect.
He will always be as rigid as he is now
Until he crumbles away in a dust heap.
Lacrymosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Above the grey pillars, the roof is in darkness.
THE END
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Richard Aldington
Images. Poetry Book Shop, London, 1915; and The Four Seas Company, Boston, 1916.